The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people
#9051
Edwin Thumboo
#9061
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore. Thumboo graduated in English from the University of Malaya in 1956. Although he applied for a position at the university, he was rejected as few locals held academic posts at that time. He therefore worked in the civil service for about nine years before finally joining the university, then renamed the University of Singapore, in 1966 following Singapore's independence. He received a Ph.D. from the university in 1970. Thumboo rose to the position of full p...
Go to Profile#9052
Emmett Leith
#9062
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Emmett Norman Leith was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and, with Juris Upatnieks of the University of Michigan, the co-inventor of three-dimensional holography. Leith received his B.S. in physics from Wayne State University in 1949 and his M.S. in physics in 1952. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Wayne State in 1978. Much of Leith's holographic work was an outgrowth of his research on synthetic aperture radar performed while a member of the Radar Laboratory of the University of Michigan's Willow Run Laboratory beginning in 1952. Leit...
Go to Profile#9053
Martin Campbell-Kelly
#9063
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Martin Campbell-Kelly FCBS FLSW is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick who has specialised in the history of computing. Campbell-Kelly has served on the editorial board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing journal. He is a committee member of the Computer Conservation Society, a Specialist Group of the British Computer Society, and is a Gresham College lecturer.
Go to Profile#9054
Martin Grötschel
#9064
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Martin Grötschel is a German mathematician known for his research on combinatorial optimization, polyhedral combinatorics, and operations research. From 1991 to 2012 he was Vice President of the Zuse Institute Berlin and served from 2012 to 2015 as ZIB's President. From 2015 to 2020 he was President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities .
Go to Profile#9055
Irving Layton
#9065
Overall Influence
1912 - 2006 (94 years)
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography , Layton fought Puritanism throughout his life:
Go to Profile#9056
Manfred Steger
#9066
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
#9057
Wynne Godley
#9067
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
Wynne Godley was an economist famous for his pessimism about the British economy and his criticism of the British government. In 2007, he and Marc Lavoie wrote a book about the "Stock-Flow Consistent" model, an analysis that predicted the global financial crisis of 2008. Dirk Bezemer argues that Godley was notable for predicting the nature of the Great Recession of the late 2000s well in advance, and for doing so on the basis of a formal model.
Go to Profile#9058
Pina Bausch
#9068
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
Philippine "Pina" Bausch was a German dancer and choreographer who was a significant contributor to a neo-expressionist dance tradition now known as . Bausch's approach was noted for a stylized blend of dance movement, prominent sound design, and involved stage sets, as well as for engaging the dancers under her to help in the development of a piece, and her work had an influence on modern dance from the 1970s forward. Her work, regarded as a continuation of the European and American expressionist movements, incorporated many expressly dramatic elements and often explored themes connected to trauma, particularly trauma arising out of relationships.
Go to Profile#9059
Jun Etō
#9069
Overall Influence
1932 - 1999 (67 years)
Jun Etō was the pen name of a Japanese literary critic, active in the Shōwa and early Heisei periods of Japan. His real name was Egashira Atsuo. Early life Etō was born in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo; his father was a banker, and his grandfather was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy. His mother died when he was four years old, and always sickly as a child, he was mostly educated at home. He had an interest in literature from an early age, ranging from the heavy works of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Fyodor Dostoevsky, to the comics of Suihō Tagawa. In 1942, he was sent to boarding school in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture.
Go to Profile#9060
Dave Rubin
#9070
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
David Joshua Rubin is an American conservative political commentator. He is the creator and host of The Rubin Report, a political talk show on YouTube and on the network BlazeTV. Launched in 2013, his show was originally part of TYT Network, until he left in 2015, in part due to widening ideological differences. Previously, Rubin hosted LGBT-themed talk shows, including The Ben and Dave Show from 2007 to 2008 and The Six Pack from 2009 to 2012, both of which he co-hosted with Ben Harvey. Rubin has written two books.
Go to Profile#9061
Dale Allison
#9071
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Dale C. Allison is an American New Testament scholar and historian of Early Christianity. Allison is currently the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. Previously , he served as Errett M. Grable Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church .
Go to Profile#9062
Fiona Wood
#9072
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Fiona Melanie Wood is an Australian plastic surgeon and burns specialist working in Perth, Western Australia. She is the director of the Royal Perth Hospital burns unit and the Western Australia Burns Service, and developed spray-on skin in collaboration with Marie Stoner. In addition, Wood is also a clinical professor with the School of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Western Australia and director of the Fiona Wood Foundation .
Go to Profile#9063
Knut Ahnlund
#9073
Overall Influence
1923 - 2012 (89 years)
Knut Emil Ahnlund was a Swedish literary historian, writer, and member of the Swedish Academy. Ahnlund, who was born in Stockholm, was an expert on 19th and 20th century Nordic, especially Danish, literature. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Henrik Pontoppidan, and later wrote on Gustav Wied and Sven Lidman, among others. He was also a novelist and published translations of various writers such as Julio Cortázar. He received his doctorate from Stockholm University, and was a professor of Nordic Literary History at the University of Aarhus. He was elected a member of the Swedish Academy ...
Go to Profile#9064
Wyclef Jean
#9074
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Nel Ust Wyclef Jean is a Haitian rapper and musician. At the age of nine, Jean immigrated to the United States with his family. He first achieved fame as a founding member, co-producer and guitarist of the New Jersey hip hop trio The Fugees, alongside Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel. The group released the albums Blunted on Reality and The Score , the latter becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. Jean would follow this with the release of his first solo studio album, Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival , which contains the top ten hit "Gone till November".
Go to Profile#9065
Oswald Hanfling
#9075
Overall Influence
1927 - 2005 (78 years)
Oswald Hanfling was an English philosopher who worked from 1970, until his death, at the Open University in the UK. Early life Oswald Hanfling was born in Berlin in 1927. His parents were Jewish and when their business was vandalised on Kristallnacht in 1938, he was sent to England by Kindertransport and lived in Bedford with a foster family. After the Second World War, he traced his family to Israel, with the help of the Red Cross.
Go to Profile#9066
Vincent Harding
#9076
Overall Influence
1931 - 2014 (83 years)
Vincent Gordon Harding was an African-American pastor, historian, and scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. When Ha...
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Lawrence Bacow
#9077
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Lawrence Seldon Bacow is an American economist and retired university administrator. He was the 29th president of Harvard University from 2018 to 2023. Before that, Bacow was the Hauser leader-in-residence at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
Go to Profile#9068
Paul Leim
#9078
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul William Leim is an American drummer and recording session musician based in Nashville. Biography Leim was born in Port Huron, Michigan and raised in Troup, Texas. He was inspired to take up drumming as a child after hearing the recording of "Skin Deep" by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra featuring Louie Bellson on drums. Robin Hood Brians, a recording studio owner, told Leim he played as if he had a metronome in his head, and invited Leim to play on recordings.
Go to Profile#9069
Ned Sherrin
#9079
Overall Influence
1931 - 2007 (76 years)
Edward George Sherrin was an English broadcaster, author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then worked in independent television before joining the BBC. He appeared in a variety of radio and television satirical shows and theatre shows, some of which he also directed.
Go to Profile#9070
Kenneth Lee Pike
#9080
Overall Influence
1912 - 2000 (88 years)
Kenneth Lee Pike was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics, the coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" and the developer of the constructed language Kalaba-X for use in teaching the theory and practice of translation.
Go to Profile#9071
James Black
#9081
Overall Influence
1924 - 2010 (86 years)
Sir James Whyte Black was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist. Together with Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, he shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1988 for pioneering strategies for rational drug-design, which, in his case, lead to the development of propranolol and cimetidine. Black established a Veterinary Physiology department at the University of Glasgow, where he became interested in the effects of adrenaline on the human heart. He went to work for ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1958 and, while there, developed propranolol, a beta blocker used for the treatment of heart disease.
Go to Profile#9072
Bohumil Hrabal
#9082
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, often named among the best Czech writers of the 20th century. Early life Hrabal was born in Židenice on 28 March 1914, in what was then the province of Moravia within Austria-Hungary, to an unmarried mother, Marie Božena Kiliánová . According to the organisers of a 2009 Hrabal exhibition in Brno, his biological father was probably Bohumil Blecha , a teacher's son a year older than Marie, who was her friend from the neighbourhood. Marie's parents opposed the idea of their daughter marrying Blecha, as he was about to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army. World ...
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Yorick Wilks
#9083
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Yorick Alexander Wilks FBCS was a British computer scientist. He was an emeritus professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield, visiting professor of artificial intelligence at Gresham College , senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, senior scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, and a member of the Epiphany Philosophers.
Go to Profile#9074
William E. Thornton
#9084
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
William Edgar Thornton was an American NASA astronaut. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from University of North Carolina and a doctorate in medicine, also from UNC. He flew on Challenger twice, the STS-8 and STS-51-B missions.
Go to Profile#9075
Barbara Tversky
#9085
Overall Influence
Barbara Tversky is a professor emerita of psychology at Stanford University and a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Tversky specializes in cognitive psychology.
Go to Profile#9076
Gary Starkweather
#9086
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Gary Keith Starkweather was an American engineer who invented the laser printer and color management. Starkweather received a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University in 1960 and an M.S. in optics from the University of Rochester in 1966. In 1969, Starkweather invented the laser printer at the Xerox Webster Research Center. He collaborated on the first fully functional laser-printing system at Xerox PARC in 1971.
Go to Profile#9077
Mercedes Aráoz
#9087
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Mercedes Rosalba Aráoz Fernández is a Peruvian economist, professor, and politician who served as Second Vice President of Peru from 2016 to 2020. At the beginning of her political career, she served as Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism from 2006 to July 2009, after which she was appointed briefly as Minister of Production, and finally as Minister of Economy and Finance, all portfolios under the second presidency of Alan García.
Go to Profile#9078
László Tisza
#9088
Overall Influence
1907 - 2009 (102 years)
László Tisza was a Hungarian-born American physicist who was Professor of Physics Emeritus at MIT. He was a colleague of famed physicists Edward Teller, Lev Landau and Fritz London, and initiated the two-fluid theory of liquid helium.
Go to Profile#9079
Keanu Reeves
#9089
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, he made his acting debut in the Canadian television series Hangin' In , before making his feature film debut in Youngblood . Reeves had his breakthrough role in the science fiction comedy Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure , and he reprised his role in its sequels. He gained praise for playing a hustler in the independent drama My Own Private Idaho and established himself as an action hero with leading roles in Point Break and Speed .
Go to Profile#9080
Irving Hexham
#9090
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Irving R. Hexham is an English-Canadian academic who has published twenty-three books and numerous articles, chapters, and book reviews. Currently, he is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, married to Karla Poewe who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Calgary, and the father of two children. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship.
Go to Profile#9081
Joan Peters
#9091
Overall Influence
1938 - 2015 (77 years)
Joan Peters , later Caro, was an American journalist and broadcaster. She wrote the 1984 book From Time Immemorial, a controversial book that wrongfully claimed that modern Palestinians were not indigenous to Palestine.
Go to Profile#9082
Rob Grootendorst
#9092
Overall Influence
1944 - 2000 (56 years)
Rob Grootendorst was a Dutch communication and argumentation theory scholar. He was professor for Dutch speech communication at the University of Amsterdam. His contributions to the argumentation field include the co-foundation of the pragma-dialectic school in argumentation theory.
Go to Profile#9083
Marc Van Ranst
#9093
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Marc Van Ranst is a Belgian public health doctor and Professor of Virology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Rega Institute for Medical Research. On 1 May 2007, he was appointed as Interministerial comissionar by the Belgian federal government to prepare Belgium for an influenza pandemic.
Go to Profile#9084
Nancy Leveson
#9094
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Nancy G. Leveson is an American specialist in system and software safety and a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, United States. Leveson gained her degrees from UCLA, including her PhD in 1980. Previously she worked at University of California, Irvine and the University of Washington as a faculty member. She has studied safety-critical systems such as the Traffic Collision Avoidance System for the avoidance of midair collisions between aircraft and problems with the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine.
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William C. Dement
#9095
Overall Influence
1928 - 2020 (92 years)
William Charles Dement was an American sleep researcher and founder of the Sleep Research Center at Stanford University. He was a leading authority on sleep, sleep deprivation and the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and narcolepsy. For this pioneering work in a previously uncharted field in the United States, he is sometimes referred to as the American father of sleep medicine.
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Xuedong Huang
#9096
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Xuedong David Huang is a Chinese American computer scientist and technology executive who has made contributions to spoken language processing and artificial intelligence, including Azure AI Services. He is Zoom's chief technology officer after serving as Microsoft's Technical Fellow and Azure AI Chief Technology Officer for 30 years. Huang is a strong advocate of AI for Accessibility, and AI for Cultural Heritage.
Go to Profile#9087
James Tour
#9097
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#9088
Sho-Chieh Tsiang
#9098
Overall Influence
1918 - 1993 (75 years)
Sho-Chieh Tsiang was a Chinese-American economist. He was born in China but resided primarily in the United States from 1949 until his death. He also resided in Taiwan in 1948 and in the 1980s. He was the father-in-law of Lars Peter Hansen .
Go to Profile#9089
Albert R. Meyer
#9099
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Albert Ronald da Silva Meyer is Hitachi America Professor emeritus of computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Biography Meyer received his PhD from Harvard University in 1972 in applied mathematics, under the supervision of Patrick C. Fischer. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty at MIT in 1969. Meyer became the Hitachi America Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in 1991. He retired from MIT in 2016.
Go to Profile#9090
M. V. Mathur
#9100
Overall Influence
1915 - 2004 (89 years)
Mukut Vehari Mathur was an Indian economist and scholar. He was the vice-chancellor of Rajasthan University and founder chairman of the Jaipur-based Institute of Development Studies, also known as IDS.
Go to Profile#9091
J. Carson Mark
#9101
Overall Influence
1913 - 1997 (84 years)
Jordan Carson Mark was a Canadian-American mathematician best known for his work on developing nuclear weapons for the United States at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Mark joined the Manhattan Project in 1945, and continued to work at Los Alamos under the leadership of Norris Bradbury after World War II ended. He became the leader of the Theoretical Division at the laboratory in 1947, a position he held until 1973. He oversaw the development of new weapons, including the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s. On the hydrogen bomb project he was able to bring together experts like Edward Teller, St...
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Theodore J. Lowi
#9102
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Theodore J. "Ted" Lowi was an American political scientist. He was the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions teaching in the Government Department at Cornell University. His area of research was the American government and public policy. He was a member of the core faculty of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs.
Go to Profile#9093
Jean-Marie Le Pen
#9103
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Jean Louis Marie Le Pen is a French far-right politician who served as President of the National Front from 1972 to 2011. He also served as Honorary President of the National Front from 2011 to 2015.
Go to Profile#9094
Chris Frith
#9104
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christopher Donald Frith FRS, FMedSci, FBA, FAAAS is a British psychologist and professor emeritus at the Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. He is also an affiliated research worker at the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford since 2013.
Go to Profile#9095
Catharine A. MacKinnon
#9105
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Go to Profile#9096
Kenneth Pitzer
#9106
Overall Influence
1914 - 1997 (83 years)
Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer was an American physical and theoretical chemist, educator, and university president. He was described as "one of the most influential physical chemists of his era" whose work "spanned almost all of the important fields of physical chemistry: thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, molecular structure, quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, chemical bonding, relativistic chemical effects, properties of concentrated aqueous salt solutions, kinetics, and conformational analysis."
Go to Profile#9097
Paritosh Pandya
#9107
Overall Influence
Paritosh K. Pandya is an Indian computer scientist based at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. Since 2020, he is an adjunct professor at IIT Bombay. Paritosh Pandya studied for a BE degree in Electronics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda , MTech degree in Computer Science at IIT Kanpur , and a PhD in Computer Science at Bombay University/TIFR .
Go to Profile#9098
Chris Martin
#9108
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Christopher Anthony John Martin is an English singer, songwriter, musician and philanthropist. He is best known as the lead vocalist, pianist, rhythm guitarist and co-founder of the rock band Coldplay.
Go to Profile#9099
Stephen L. Adler
#9109
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Stephen Louis Adler is an American physicist specializing in elementary particles and field theory. He is currently professor emeritus in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Go to Profile#9100
Mary Anne Warren
#9110
Overall Influence
1946 - 2010 (64 years)
Mary Anne Warren was an American writer and philosophy professor, noted for her writings on the issue of abortion and animal rights. Biography Warren was a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University for many years. Her essays have sometimes been required readings in academic courses dealing with the abortion debate and they are frequently cited in major publications like Peter Singer's The Moral of the Story: An Anthology of Ethics Through Literature and Bernard Gert's Bioethics: A Systematic Approach. She was sometimes described as a feminist, largely due to her pro-choice writings.
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